Promotional products have widely been used to promote a brand name or image, build customer awareness and/or announce a presence in an industry. Branded promotional products may include advertising, sales promotion and marketing communications media. These products generally include various types of merchandise imprinted with an advertiser's identification, message or logo. The branded promotional products sector of the advertising industry provides unique marketing opportunities. Branded products are easy to understand and useful in meeting many marketing objectives, such as announcing a name change or building a company image.
Customers seek high quality products that effectively promote their brand and logo. They want a useful product obtained through a convenient transaction. However, customers are often frustrated because they have to rely on a reseller (or distributor) for purchasing options and the flow of information. Generally, resellers are expected to find customers favorable prices, produce samples and ensure timely delivery.
Currently, vendors have little or no contact with customers and rely on resellers (or distributors) to reach customers. Vendors spend significant amounts of effort and money providing price quotes and samples to resellers (or distributors). It is difficult for vendors to gather product or customer market research, customer buying pattern information, and other customer related information.
Traditionally, the promotional products industry has operated under a linear supply-chain model of distribution. Typically, a customer hires a reseller (or distributor) to assist in selecting a branded product for an event or promotion. The reseller locates the desired merchandise through established vendor partner relationships. The vendor manufacturers or imports the items, adds the brand, and ships the product. In addition, a second vendor may add the process which may include branding. Business service partners provide services such as shipping, financing, and insurance. Media partners deliver educational and other useful information. Similar problems arise in other industries as well.
Currently, a standard method for purchasing products (e.g., branded promotional products) has been difficult to implement due to the uniqueness of products and enormous number of possible product and process combinations. For example, a company or other entity may regularly purchase promotional products for advertisement, brand awareness and other purposes. In addition, a company may promote new products on a regular basis and make frequent improvements on current products. Therefore, repeated orders for promotional products may be required for similar products with different printing processes, for example. Similarly, the same or similar printing process may be used on different products. Due to the overlap in items and processes, inefficiencies may occur when ordering promotional or other products, especially when orders are frequently repeated. Typically, each process is stored with each item. As a result, it may become inefficient and redundant to store each process with each item when the processes may be the same or similar.
Oftentimes, a vendor (or distributor) may attempt to define all possible product stock keeping units (“SKUs”) when presenting promotional products options to a customer. An SKU is a number or identifier associated with a product for inventory purposes. This creates inefficiencies and duplicated efforts because the product does not become a SKU until the item and process are combined. Presently, there is no standard method of specifying promotional products because they are so varied and numerous.
In other industries, a service or product provider may order supplies and inventory on a regular basis. Such industries may include office supplies, furniture, aviation supplies, marine supplies, interior design, beauty salon and spa supplies, medical office supplies, restaurant and bar supplies, gift shops and clothing boutique, and other industries where orders for various products or requests for services may be placed. Similarly, inefficiencies develop due to the overlap of analogous orders and purchases over time.
These and other drawbacks exist with current systems.